


Wednesday

by Inbetween



Series: Days Of The Week [4]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25692886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inbetween/pseuds/Inbetween
Summary: Loki is injured, and Peter is armed with wiki-how, a cat, and a poorly equipped first-aid kit.What could go wrong?For those looking for a good ol dose of the vibes during 2012, when the Avengers were a big happy family :D
Relationships: Loki & Peter Parker, background Loki & Thor
Series: Days Of The Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1682737
Comments: 36
Kudos: 263





	Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series, and the extent to which it can be read as a standalone is limited.  
> That being said, if you're just here for the friendship and the hurt/comfort, this is the fic for you! :D
> 
> If you haven't read the parts before this:  
> This fic follows the 2012 vibe where Loki was a supervillain terrorizing New York and the Avengers were a big happy family--Spiderman homecoming has happened, but nothing else.
> 
> Previously!!!  
> Peter attempted to save Loki from a collapsing building. Loki, despite being injured, manages to levitate it long enough to walk Peter through his panic attack, and for the Hulk and Stark to uncover them.  
> (Loki teleported away before he could be seen helping Peter, like the rat bastard he is.)

The rock skips across the pavement before falling victim to a gutter. Peter, who had been kicking it for 2 blocks, frowns.

He trails to a stop beside the grate and stares blankly into the darkness.

He sighs and turns on his phone. He smiles a little at the lock-screen (He and Ned were posing over a sleeping MJ, a paper hat balanced on her head) before it fades.

It’s midnight. May would be worried.

He didn’t feel like being worried over right now.

Peter moves out of the middle of the street and drops heavily onto a bench.

The bench is wet. The chill seeps through the hoodie Tony had given him to hide the suit. His mask is in the pockets.

Peter tilts his head to the sky and wonders if he’s angry.

He doesn’t _feel_ angry, but not-angry people didn’t storm out of Avenger’s Tower. They didn’t nearly break the umbrella Tony had shoved at him with a warning of “It’s going to rain.”

Peter could tell he’d wanted to say something else, their argument still ringing in his ears.

Tony’s eyes had been tight around the corners, mouth a white, stressed line. But he hadn’t said anything more, because Peter’s throat was still sore from yelling _“I did the right thing! Why can’t you respect that?”_ and Tony had looked so _tired._

Peter’s teeth creak. Unclenching his jaw is a painstaking process and he doesn’t _want_ to. He wants to keep tightening his jaw until something _breaks._

The rain hits his face. Peter doesn’t open his umbrella. He probably looks stupid, sitting in the strengthening rain with an umbrella creaking in his grip.

Peter doesn’t feel angry.

Anger was supposed to be hot, vicious, and burning your eyes until you cried.

He feels cold. Flat, every movement carefully controlled so he doesn’t shatter something he doesn’t mean to.

It reminds him of Loki, standing in a grocery store and glaring at a shelf he hadn’t meant to dent.

Oh.

Maybe Peter was angry.

The rain slips down the neck of his hoodie and his hands shake with the cold of it. Peter looks at the umbrella in his hand. It’s a bright yellow he can’t imagine Tony using. He softens despite himself.

He hates himself for it a moment later, walking down the street with Tony’s umbrella, Tony’s hoodie, and Tony’s fury still making his teeth grit.

He walks another 3, aimless blocks, before deciding he wasn’t angry at _Tony_.

He was angry at how _guilty_ the man made him feel. Like Peter had disappointed him somehow. Because trying to save Loki had been the right thing to do, and Peter _believed_ that.

Even when Tony had called him an idiot, pacing, and white-knuckled. _“Why didn’t you just wait!”_ He’d whirled around, shoulders tight, shaking and _scared. “You should have waited for backup! How could you possibly be that irresponsible?”_

Peter hadn’t known how to explain that he’d thought Loki would listen to him. So he hadn’t and Tony had taken his silence like a knife in his back.

Peter turns abruptly, cutting off a business-woman who glares at him for it. He jogs across the street. His eyes are fixed on the glowing blue windows of a convenience store.

Maybe he could get something hot, focus on not burning himself instead of the guilt and anger tripping circles in his head. He opens the door too hard and the glass shakes in its frame.

The cashier squints at him. “Didn’t open your umbrella in time?” He asks, watching Peter close his umbrella as water drips from his hoodie.

“Do you have a coffee machine?” Peter asks, refusing to feel rude for it.

“In the back.” The casher dives back into his book and Peter wrings out his hoodie as he goes.

The coffee machine only makes black coffee. Peter stares at his handful of change. He’s weighing how much he hates himself when he catches movement in the corner of his eye.

Loki is standing in the store’s limited pharmacy section and glaring at a first aid kit like it’d killed his first-born.

Peter stares. “Are you invading every convenience store in the country?” He blurts.

Loki looks at him, makes a disgusted noise, and looks away.

Peter, who had done nothing to warrant that, is offended enough to walk up to him.

It was offense and _purely offense_ , that makes him ask: “Do you need any help?”

…Okay, maybe it was less offense and more concern. The last time he’d seen the sorcerer he’d had a burned arm and one hell of a nosebleed. And the latter was his fault.

Peter also felt like sticking it to Tony right now, so. Unwarranted Sympathy for Super-villains (?) at full _fucking_ throttle.

“Why are you talking to me?” Loki asks and sounds genuinely pained. “What is it with Americans and wanting to talk to people? I’m just standing here. I did nothing to deserve this.”

Peter frowns. “You invaded New York.” He points out. “And then refused to leave. You did this to yourself.”

“Fuck you, which ones are the pain-killers?”

Peter stares at him, then points at the ibuprofen. “Are you always this rude?”

“No.” Loki grabs 4 bottles.

“Let me guess,” Peter says dryly. “You’re only rude on Wednesdays.”

“For you?” Loki gives him a snide once-over. “I think I can make an exception. Why do you keep accosting me in stores.”

“You’re very easy to accost,” Peter admits, following him to the counter. “Did you like the gummy worms?” He grabs a chocolate bar and slips into line behind the supervillain.

“I don’t like anything.”

“You totally did,” Peter says, smiling a little softer than he means to.

Loki strides away from him like he hates him.

It’s basically a more dignified sprint.

Peter, who has never been dignified in his life, sprints to catch up.

“Are you okay?” He asks, fumbling with the bar and his umbrella.

“I’d be better if you left.” Loki says sourly.

“Hold the umbrella, you’re taller.” Peter says, ignoring him.

Loki must hate the rain more than Peter, because he does. That, or he couldn’t resist the opportunity to drench half of Peter in rain.

Peter offers him half the bar a moment later and Loki sighs deeply.

“Give up,” Peter says cheerily. “Misery loves company and I feel like shit.”

“Does it have to be my problem though?” He takes the chocolate. Peter is delighted at the defeat in his voice.

He is less delighted to find Loki’s nose is bleeding again. Peter points it out and uses the distraction to look him over.

The god had ditched his armor, save for the piece on his injured forearm. The metal was twisted and scorched, covered in black clumps Peter thinks might be blood. He’s wearing jeans and a dark green sweater.

It clashes with Peter’s umbrella.

Loki glares at the blood on his fingers. More collects on his lip.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asks, then points out: “I’m not going to stop asking.”

Loki side-eyes him and Peter gets flashbacks to the agent he’d turned into a frog.

(The agent had displayed amphibian-like qualities for days after the change. Only Thor’s reassurance that it was a completely normal side effect kept him from resigning.)

“I overexerted myself.” Loki says shortly. He maneuvers a pill bottle out of the bag with a grace that shamed Peter’s earlier attempt at juggling a chocolate bar and an umbrella.

“Are you going to keep following me?” Loki asks around 3 pills, then, to Peter’s horror, _chews_ them.

“Uh,” Peter says, floored by the god’s utter lack of reaction. Did he not have taste-buds? Did aliens not have taste-buds?

“I, I figured you might want some help with your arm? And I don’t have anything else to do, so.”

Loki stops walking. Peter, who had walked directly into the downpour, makes a betrayed screeching noise and dives back under the umbrella.

“You’re not lying,” Loki says, dead-eyed. “You’re really just a well-intentioned idiot.”

“Hey!”

“Why hasn’t natural selection killed you yet?”

“Why haven’t _you?”_ Peter challenges and his voice comes out sharp. He’s glaring at Loki, but the prickle of warning running over his skin isn’t _enough._

It isn’t _enough_ to trump the need to hear Loki say something, _prove_ that he wasn’t a bad person. That Peter was justified, that Tony was wrong, that the exhaustion clawing his mind to pieces from the panic attack was _worth it._

Loki blinks at him, deliberately slow.

It should look condescending, cold. Instead, it reminds Peter of the practiced calm he’d had beneath the collapsed building.

 _‘He’s reacting to me being upset,’_ Peter thinks, frustration ebbing into fascination. _‘He’s slowing himself down so he doesn’t make things worse.’_

Peter feels something unwind in his shoulders. That’s…that’s more damning than any flowery, good-willed speech the god could have spewed.

Loki wasn’t inherently cruel.

“Not through any desire to see you live.” Loki says mildly, a warning between his teeth.

Loki wasn’t _inherently_ cruel, but he preferred to be.

Peter could work with that.

Peter raises his hands, backing off. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.” He says, heeding his spidey-sense as it pulls his muscles taut in anticipation of a fight.

For a moment he thinks Loki won’t give. Then Loki breaks eye-contact and the fight floods out of Peter’s shoulders.

Peter shoves his hands into his pockets. His eyes are dragged back towards Loki’s arm.

They’d stopped near a streetlight.

The light catches on the ripped metal, making the edges look newly sharpened. Pieces of it had fused with his flesh. Peter’s stomach turns as Loki shifts and the skin tears. Scabs rip and fresh blood begins to collect in divots of warped metal.

“I don’t think you can take care of that yourself.” Peter says, voice small.

“Is it worth questioning why you want to help me?” Loki asks, exhausted.

 _‘Because it's my fault,’_ Peter thinks. “Not really.” Peter says.

Peter hadn’t expected Loki to actually lead him to his apartment. Froggy, who had barreled out of the door and spent 5 minutes trying to trip Loki onto his face, proved otherwise. Her prosthetic makes happy little clicking noises as she runs.

“Hi,” Peter says when Loki manages to hobble past her with a curse. “Can I pick you up?”

Froggy mewls.

Peter walks into Loki’s apartment with the god’s cat in his arms. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until he had her tiny, fragile warmth cradled to his chest. She purrs like she’s trying to warm him up faster. Peter smiles.

“The door, spiderling.” Loki calls dryly from deeper inside the apartment. Peter kicks the door shut and takes in his surroundings.

It’s…untouched, is the kindest word Peter can put to it. It had clearly come pre-furnished and the entire space had an eerie, sterilized quality to it.

If it wasn’t for the cat in his arms, Peter would’ve been hard-pressed to say anyone lived here.

Cold white light floods the living room, catching on the dust that lines the empty shelves. Dainty pawprints are tracking through it. The couch has a blanket on it, the edge of what might be a book peeking from beneath.

The signs of occupation end there.

“Dude,” Peter says, horrified, and thinks he needs no further elaboration. He steps deeper into the apartment, half expecting the rug to eat him.

The living room opens directly into the kitchen, offering the illusion of space. Loki is sitting on the counter. He rolls his eyes.

“It’s not that bad.” He says.

“It's that bad,” Peter says, still horrified. “This is…this is ready-made depression, man. Where are your plants? Your books? The snow globes nobody needs but buys anyways out of touristy obligation? Do you even have a fridge magnet?”

“I don’t know what a fridge magnet is.” Loki says the same way one might say _‘I hate you and I wish you were dead.’_

“The next time I inevitably run into you at a store, I’m making you buy a cactus.”

Which is when Peter’s head clears and he realizes Loki had called him _‘Spiderling’_. Ice bolts down his spine.

“What?” Peter rasps, and when Loki stares at him: “What did you call me.”

Loki squints at him for a moment, silent, before raising an eyebrow. “You thought I didn’t know.” Loki realizes and manages to make it sound like Peter’s fault. “You are _wearing_ your suit.”

“…People usually just assume they’re weird leggings.” Peter admits quietly when it becomes clear that lying to Loki is impossible. He holds Froggy a little tighter.

Loki looks pained. “Your entire race,” He says. “Is too stupid to have made it this long. Don’t…don’t even try to defend yourself, I’ve been on _youtube_.”

Peter flushes, then has a moment of abject _terror_ at the thought of Loki finding Ned’s and his DIY channel.

“Do you have a towel?” Peter squeaks, trying to move past his rapidly spiraling thoughts. “I feel like there’s going to be a lot of blood and most of the stuff in here is wood.”

Loki digs his fingers into the side of his neck, squeezing his eyes shut.

He can hear the human (Peter? Loki thinks he’d mentioned it once.) moving around behind him, knocking into things with quiet curses.

Loki had moved to the table on his insistence. His arm is laid out on the towel they’re using to protect the wood, blood blooming from it.

His stomach turns. He isn’t aware of tipping forward until the table meets his forehead with a hollow _thump._

He should probably care more about his injury than he does.

His thoughts are slow and thinking of _why_ he should care is more effort than its worth. So he lets the thought slip away.

His chest is cold where his seidr should be, emptied until the hollow pressure swells up his throat and into his head. It’s a strange, numb kind of pain.

Reflex makes him try to send seidr to the injured limb.

His chest tightens, finding nothing. His next exhale is forced out of him. The pressure builds, burning up his throat and through his head.

Blood begins to drip from his nose. Loki doesn’t bother to clean it this time.

“Mr. Loki?” Peter asks tentatively. “Are you…okay?”

“Give me my cat.” Loki says. There’s silence. Peter thinks _‘Don’t be rude’_ at him so hard he takes psychic damage.

Loki remains unremorseful.

Peter sighs and Froggy’s paws hit the floor. She wiggles into his lap a moment later.

As though sensing the pit where his seidr should be, she purrs into his chest.

“Incredible job.” He murmurs against the cold wood, a touch sourly. “The healers pale in comparison.”

Froggy digs her claws into his thigh. It doesn’t do much.

“…Sorry.” Loki says anyways.

Peter makes his way to the couch, pulling out his phone.

Loki should probably be worried about what he’s doing. But there’s something oddly disarming about how he immediately tangles himself in the discarded blanket.

He doesn’t look like somebody planning an impromptu betrayal. Just…very stressed.

Loki sits up and draws a dragger with a flick of his wrist. Then he remembers Doom hadn’t returned one of them. He hacks at the armor with thinly veiled aggression.

(On the couch, Peter sends him a disapproving look. Loki cuts more carefully when he isn’t looking.)

Its repetitive work and his mind starts to wander.

Unlike many of the spells in his repertoire, Loki had learned levitation from one of his tutors. The woman had looked at him, weary beyond measure, and gestured at one of the tables.

 _“Loki,”_ she’d said, scrubbing a hand down her face. _“Would you say that table weighs more than you?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Therefore, should you try to levitate it?”_

_“No,”_ Loki had recited through his teeth. _“First rule of levitation: never levitate anything heavier than yourself.”_

_“Okay, now do it.”_

_“What?”_

_“You’ve set 2 gardens on fire in a week. The only way you learn is through consequences.”_

He hadn’t told her the second time had been on purpose. (Sif had pissed him off and she was fond of the apples that grew in it.)

Later, his mother had pulled him into her lap with a huff. _“You don’t get to be grumpy,”_ She’d said, lighting the fireplace with a look. _“You did this to yourself.”_

Loki had pressed his face, bleeding nose and all, into her dress then feigned innocence. She’d shot him a narrow look, but there was a smile in the corner of her mouth.

Loki’s chest aches with more than exhaustion. His hand slips, sending the blade into the table.

He bites down on his cheek till his mouth fills with blood. The armor lies in metal splinters around his arm.

He eyes the pieces still fused with his flesh. Starting on them would shatter the monotonous buzzing in his arm with fresh agony.

The bottles of painkillers rattle as they spill onto the table. Loki, who had mostly forgotten about the child, tries to cover up a flinch. Peter rights them with a harried apology.

“Uh,” Loki says eloquently. Peter doesn’t notice, squinting at his phone and fumbling into the other chair.

“Okay so,” Peter says. The glow of his phone turns his dark circles into bruises. “We definitely need to start by disinfecting everything and…” He trails off and raises his head to stare blankly into space.

“Does the bacteria on earth affect you? Have you, Thor, and the other aliens irreparably fucked up our ecosystem with whatever bacteria you brought with you? What’s…did nobody…have we even looked into that?”

“…As a general rule, space-ships have sanitization procedures to avoid interspecies contamination.” Loki says, less to be helpful and more because Peter was gaining a fevered, dangerous look in his eye.

Loki recognizes it from the time he’d nearly started a war with the Vanir.

(He’d realized none of their intergalactic texts had proper citations at 4 am, rendering the 30 books he’d read useless. Thor, playing the part of the responsible elder brother, had had to carry him out of Freyr’s throne room.

He’d promptly laughed until he cried.

Loki, who was still incensed and several shades of sleep-deprived, called him a “boorish motherfucker.”

“Aye,” Thor had said, tears streaming down his face. “But I’m not the one that called Freyr a ‘Godless idiot.’”

“Oh, shit.” Loki had said, horrified.

“Nice one, silver-tongue,” Thor said and Loki hit him with a book.)

“You zoned out again,” Peter says, watching him carefully. “…If we had to get you a blood donor—”

“It’s not blood-loss,” Loki snaps. Then, at Peter’s unconvinced look: “Thor and I aren’t the same species, so he’d be little help.”

“Then what is it?” Peter says, irritation drawing his eyes tight.

Loki knocks a leg into the table and watches his irritation dissipate at the distraction.

 _‘Easy,’_ Loki thinks. “There should be disinfectant in the kit.” He says.

Peter frowns, confused but unable to place the minor manipulation. “…Right,” He says uncertainly. The lack of answer slips past him.

Loki sighs softly. _‘He’d be easy to take advantage of,’_ he thinks idly, watching him rifle through the kit with a small concerned frown. _‘…Too easy. There’s no fun in it.’_

The thought doesn’t quite ring true, but Loki had long since gotten used to his own lies.

Later, Loki is forced to admit that the child was right: He wouldn’t have been able to take care of the injury himself.

He tries to help in the beginning but is quickly forced to hand over the knife.

“Mr. Loki?” Peter had asked, frowning again. Loki hid his shaking fingers in a fist.

“We’re going to trip each other up if we work at the same time,” Loki had said, darkness eating at the edges of his vision. His tongue is thick, clumsy, but the words come out even.

“…Tell me if you need a break,” Peter had said and fit the knife under a scab. Loki exhaled shakily and spends the rest of the process forcing his expression neutral.

He’d flinched once, a piece of metal coming away with wet, ripping noises. Peter had looked horrified and the sight was enough for Loki to roll his eyes and kick him in the knee.

“Ow!” Peter had said, betrayed. Loki evened out his expression.

“I’m fine,” He lied. Peter had hesitated, eyes wide and mouth a stressed, white line that trembled at the corners.

“Spiderling,” Loki says, praying the exhaustion sounded like exasperation. “There’s nothing you could possibly do to hurt me.” A little gentler there, an apology in the undertones. He almost messes it up, throat tight around a scream.

It’s another lie and he’s starting to think Peter knows it. But he looks reassured despite himself and Loki gives him a weak smile. He hopes it comes across as dry.

Loki hadn’t told Peter that the painkillers weren’t working, not when his hands were a little steadier thinking they did.

Loki still doesn’t as he wraps bandages around his arm.

Loki is dizzy, the room swelling and falling before him. Forcing the pills down had felt like swallowing stones.

He wants to close his eyes, slump onto the table, and wait until his breaths didn’t feel like knives.

The child’s fingers are shaking and bloodstained.

Loki straightens instead, pretending to examine the wrapping. He can’t make out the edges, lines fizzling in and out of his vision.

“It’ll do,” Loki says and his voice sounds far-away. He keeps the frown off his face, flicking Peter a quick look. “Thank you.”

“Oh,” Peter rasps, tucking his shaking fingers into his elbows. He gets blood on himself. Loki does frown, then. “So you _can_ be polite.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Loki says, ruffling his hair. Peter jerks, looking at him in surprise.

Loki, who was starting to enter what Thor called his _“pained enough to act inebriated, Loki will you PLEASE sit down”_ state, can’t find it in himself to care.

“Wash your hands.” Loki says. Peter, still reeling, does as told.

Loki ushers Froggy after him and watches from the corner of his eye as Peter sinks to the floor and begins to pet her. He relaxes, slowly.

Loki frowns, squinting at the phone he’d left behind. “Peter. Is that wiki-how.”

Peter laughs suddenly and a little helplessly.

Loki stares at him in disbelief, almost offended.

Peter’s laughter increases, ringing through the apartment. His shoulders shake as Froggy scampers in and out of his lap, delighting in her new jungle gym.

“I, I swear I didn’t just use wiki-how,” Peter says, tears in his eyes and grin splitting his face. “I made Ned text my, my aunt. She’s a…a nurse.”

“Oh,” Loki says, vision swimming. “in _that_ case.”

Peter collapses into giggles again.

Loki uses his distraction to bury his face in his good arm, closing his eyes to blessed darkness. His mouth feels like its full of cotton.

He must have faded at some point, because when Peter speaks he shatters what must have been a long silence.

“Loki,” Peter says, voice quiet. “Why did you invade New York?”

“I had to.” Loki answers, before his brain catches up to his mouth and his jaw slams shut around the words. It sends a new racket of pain through his head.

“What do you mean?” Peter presses, distant through the pain.

“Doesn’t matter.” Loki says tightly.

They’re silent again. It's heavy this time, sharp.

Peter inhales suddenly, a soft _‘oh’_ escaping him. “Your eyes are green. They were, they were blue in the footage of the invasion, weren’t they?”

“Spiderling,” Loki says, chest tightening and voice strained.

“That’s, that’s like what—like what happened to Hawkeye—”

“That’s not all of it!” Loki snaps, surging up. His vision flutters and he steadies himself with his bad arm. It buckles and Loki makes a vicious noise when Peter jerks to help him.

“It’s not—Most of my mind was my own. It was only…only certain memories and—” Loki bites his tongue. “You should leave.” He says around the blood.

Peter is tense, standing in the corner of his vision. The air around him is fraught with indecision and stubbornness.

Loki feels something ugly building on his tongue, sharp and angry. Froggy bumps into Peter’s leg and breaks the tension before he can.

“Fine,” Peter says, still a little pale as Loki hides his shaking arm in his lap. “Fine, okay.” He walks forwardly jerkily. He takes his phone and slides one of the pill bottles forward.

He meets Loki’s eyes, cold, hard, and _steady._

“I’m sorry.” He says, belying the steel in his eyes. Loki waits for the second statement, the one that’d match the resolve. But all he does is shove his phone into his pocket.

“I fed Froggy, uh, earlier. So.” He ducks his head awkwardly, backing away. “Don’t sleep at the table, okay?”

Loki stares after him blankly. The door shuts.

His exhaustion plows into him and Loki lets his shoulders fall. He looks at the painkillers, a cold, humorless smile in the corners of his mouth.

“They don’t work.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was fueled purely by the comment's y'all have left on the ones before this. Please drop a comment if you enjoyed the work, because it goes a long way towards making the next one happen :D Also it makes me happy :)
> 
> Kudos to my ass of a friend [Percy546](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Percy546) who sat with me until i finished this. They're writing a hilarious She-Ra fic if y'all wanna check it out! :D (Childhood Catradora feels, with a sinister plot in the background for spice ;) )


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